Thanks guys. I actually stopped playing ~12 noon today with a position of 11th on the medium leader board. Looks like I just managed to stay in the top 25. I seem to have fewer games played than anyone on any of the leader boards except for Mitta in the light queue and Indra in the heavy queue. Even when I was at 11th I had ~1/3 fewer games than almost everyone on the leader boards. I spent around 20 hours playing in 4 or so sessions, with coffee/meal breaks/sleeping/wank timecuring cancer in between playing which comes out to around 7.5 minutes per game. That would put: RedDiablo at ~55.375 hours play time, ciller at ~62.5 hours, Lord Azure at ~62.25 hours, and Khobai at a paltry ~51 hours.

I spent pretty much the entire time dropping against people that either are/were at one point in the top 25, most games would be 50% or so the same people from game to game. As you would expect the top lights were pretty much all 3 ML/2 SSRM2 ravens, including all of the top 3, with some minor variation in loadout. Some people were running 2 SRM4/4 SL JR7-D's though. Mediums was a mixed bag, I was running a TBT-7M for the whole thing, ciller was centurions both A and D, you also saw a lot of hunchbacks and cicadas. I think mediums were the most diverse grouping by far. Heavys were a lot of catapults and cataphracts with the occasional dragon. Azurescens was running a 2 ERPPC/Gauss 3D Tzeench, when I saw him, was in a 2 PPC/2 ERPPC K2. Which is amusing given all the whining on the official forums about everyone and their dog being in a splatapult. You did see them of course but they rarely were dominating games, at least in what I assume is the high ELO bracket. In assaults it was mostly atlases and mostly DDCs though you did see a lot of D's with some stalkers and awesomes, particularly the PB, as well. Khobai looked like he was switching between a DDC and a founders atlas.

In general it was a good group of people to play with/against, raging assholes were few and far between and everyone generally knew what they were doing. 8-0 stomps were uncommon and usually happened after a 2 minute queue time when I didn't recognize anyone on one of the teams.

Overall I went 95-63 W/L and 176/39 K/D in my TBT-7M, which is an awesome mech. I'm more than happy with that performance considering my goal was to go 50% W/L and 1/1 K/D and hopefully get into the top 100 when I started. Too bad you don't get a banner for being in the top 1%/10% ect as I could use an epeen inflater in my mech. I stopped playing when it started feeling like a grind and generally enjoyed myself. Hopefully the next tourney will be something more like an average of your best 25 or 50 games so its less grindy overall.

Busithoth wrote:

it takes cojones to taunt 'bring it' in a trebuchet.

BRING IT!

Edit: Hmmm despite the tourney being over for for more than an hour when I started this post I lost two spots to be 26th, with the 'more games played' tiebreaker pushing me off. This is saddening to me.

Hopefully the next tourney will be something more like an average of your best 25 or 50 games so its less grindy overall.

This, a thousand times. That's pretty much the main reason I sat this one out -- the wife and I have an agreement that Saturday is Mechwarrior day, but there's no way I could get away with adding Sunday (and probably good chunks of Friday and Monday) to that without major doghouse banishment, and it sounds that'd be the only way to be competitive.

The other reason was the no-groups requirement. I realize they probably did that because the Youtube commenters on the MWO forums would have a fucking shit-fit otherwise, but still -- fuck 'em. MWO is a social game.

Hopefully the next tourney will be something more like an average of your best 25 or 50 games so its less grindy overall.

This, a thousand times. That's pretty much the main reason I sat this one out -- the wife and I have an agreement that Saturday is Mechwarrior day, but there's no way I could get away with adding Sunday (and probably good chunks of Friday and Monday) to that without major doghouse banishment, and it sounds that'd be the only way to be competitive.

Yeah it was definately set up for the sterotypical single gamer. I would have been hard pressed to get the 162 games in that Roma did, much less the 3-500 the top people were getting. For this tourney I can see the no groups thing and that didn't really bother me, just didn't have the time to commit. or ?

Guess I should have used the sleeper hold on the kids to make more free time.

Expect to get a lot of shit when you get outscored. God help you if you pull a donut.

It's happened many times before and will happen many times in the future I'm sure.

Kaiser Sosei wrote:

DanTheManInJapan wrote:

Quote:

Hopefully the next tourney will be something more like an average of your best 25 or 50 games so its less grindy overall.

This, a thousand times. That's pretty much the main reason I sat this one out -- the wife and I have an agreement that Saturday is Mechwarrior day, but there's no way I could get away with adding Sunday (and probably good chunks of Friday and Monday) to that without major doghouse banishment, and it sounds that'd be the only way to be competitive.

Yeah it was definately set up for the sterotypical single gamer. I would have been hard pressed to get the 162 games in that Roma did, much less the 3-500 the top people were getting. For this tourney I can see the no groups thing and that didn't really bother me, just didn't have the time to commit. or ?

Guess I should have used the sleeper hold on the kids to make more free time.

I think a lot of the reason for the format was to get all the srsbsns people to solo queue so they get accurate ELO rankings. I would expect/hope the next one will have much less of an emphasis on the number of games played.

Also I think I clawed my way back to 25th in the last 20 minutes so, suck it guy that had 30% more games but the same number of points.

Wow, lots of grinding! I wish they'd show which mechs\variants each player on the top 25 or whatever leaderboard used the most. I'm sure they could use some of the data gathered from the competition for balancing. Or to introduce new bugs...

Wow, lots of grinding! I wish they'd show which mechs\variants each player on the top 25 or whatever leaderboard used the most. I'm sure they could use some of the data gathered from the competition for balancing. Or to introduce new bugs...

Wow, lots of grinding! I wish they'd show which mechs\variants each player on the top 25 or whatever leaderboard used the most. I'm sure they could use some of the data gathered from the competition for balancing. Or to introduce new bugs...

inb4 trebs get nerfed due to roma

I've been using 2 large lasers on mine, even though Roma said that was dirty and I should use mediums instead. I feel so naughty

I played casually throughout the weekend and kept running into Broceratops and several other names I see are in the top tourney brackets. Maybe I should have entered? I dunno. Either way, they never did explain what it is you're Opting-In to that you can't Opt-Out of.

Yeah, I saw Broceratops and a few of the other names on the leaderboards this weekend as well. I like to think that was just me bringing the team ELO average up enough to play in the big leagues once in a while

Splatcats were out in full force throughout the weekend. I got one-shotted a handful of times, which I can never tell if it's just netcode lag making it seem like I was one-shotted, or I actually was one-shotted.

I played casually throughout the weekend and kept running into Broceratops and several other names I see are in the top tourney brackets. Maybe I should have entered? I dunno. Either way, they never did explain what it is you're Opting-In to that you can't Opt-Out of.

YOU CAN NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER, SERIOUSLY POSITIVELY FUCKING EVER OPT OUT ONCE YOU OPT IN.

Hah! I just saw how far I am from getting to a 1:1 kill:death ratio. I am excited to get home from work and earn as much as possible before this bonus ends. One thing I noticed last night was that my UAC5's on my ILYA would jam early and often on Caustic. Is this because of the heat? It was pretty debilitating. Shoot 2-3 times, both guns jammed. Repeat. This didn't happen on other maps, only Caustic, but more than once last night.

Heavys were a lot of catapults and cataphracts with the occasional dragon. Azurescens was running a 2 ERPPC/Gauss 3D Tzeench, when I saw him, was in a 2 PPC/2 ERPPC K2. Which is amusing given all the whining on the official forums about everyone and their dog being in a splatapult. You did see them of course but they rarely were dominating games, at least in what I assume is the high ELO bracket.

I hope this is the proof that ravebomb needs that SRMs are no longer the terrifying end-all solution they once were. I think if this tourney happened prior to the TBT patch that Splat Cats would've been a lot better rated, but as it stands? Naaa. The best A1 solution I've tried so far after the patch is a pair of LRM15s and SRM/SSRM (depending on how good your ECM support is), but even that's not a great solution and you make a lot of sacrifices for tonnage compared to the pure Splat Cat. Artemis would be nice, but I can't afford "wasting" the tonnage for the S/SRMs.

Quote:

In general it was a good group of people to play with/against, raging assholes were few and far between and everyone generally knew what they were doing. 8-0 stomps were uncommon and usually happened after a 2 minute queue time when I didn't recognize anyone on one of the teams.

That's actually refreshing to see, but I also kind of expected such with everyone broken up. Did you guys get to link up in TeamSpeak, or did everything have to go thru typed chat?

Quote:

Overall I went 95-63 W/L and 176/39 K/D in my TBT-7M, which is an awesome mech. I'm more than happy with that performance considering my goal was to go 50% W/L and 1/1 K/D and hopefully get into the top 100 when I started. Too bad you don't get a banner for being in the top 1%/10% ect as I could use an epeen inflater in my mech. I stopped playing when it started feeling like a grind and generally enjoyed myself. Hopefully the next tourney will be something more like an average of your best 25 or 50 games so its less grindy overall.

It's okay, Roma, you're still #11 in our eyes. (also congrats totally smoking out two of my NGNG unit with much less grind)

frequencysurfer wrote:

Wow, lots of grinding! I wish they'd show which mechs\variants each player on the top 25 or whatever leaderboard used the most. I'm sure they could use some of the data gathered from the competition for balancing. Or to introduce new bugs...

Aside from grinding, my other issue with the tournament: how many people are just basic-tree unlocked, elited, and mastered w/full module load on their competition mechs? I'm only master-unlocked on CPLTs (and still haven't unlocked the C1's master, nor own a C4), and I only own the Adv Sensor Range module right now. I wouldn't even bother with a tourney until I had a full set of modules and could slap them on every mech I would use in competition.

Arsinius M wrote:

I played casually throughout the weekend and kept running into Broceratops and several other names I see are in the top tourney brackets. Maybe I should have entered? I dunno. Either way, they never did explain what it is you're Opting-In to that you can't Opt-Out of.

Oddly enough, I remember dropping against him yesterday while 4-manning. Which, IMHO, means the tourney system is broken.

Arsinius M wrote:

Splatcats were out in full force throughout the weekend. I got one-shotted a handful of times, which I can never tell if it's just netcode lag making it seem like I was one-shotted, or I actually was one-shotted.

Seriously, they're easy to beat as long as you see them coming. 4x and 6x ER PPC assaults just wail on you from afar.

I hope they were getting ELO last night. Mine had to have dropped like a rock. I couldn't have killed a mortally wounded kitten with an atlas. I was abjectly terrible. Apparently grouping with you people has put me out of my league in some way.

Splatcats were out in full force throughout the weekend. I got one-shotted a handful of times, which I can never tell if it's just netcode lag making it seem like I was one-shotted, or I actually was one-shotted.

Seriously, they're easy to beat as long as you see them coming. 4x and 6x ER PPC assaults just wail on you from afar.

Yes, they're easy to beat when they're easy to beat. The other half of the time, they will rape your face on one 90-pt volley.

My KDR apparently went up a bit over this weekend but my Wins:Losses has nearly leveled out.

Splatcats were out in full force throughout the weekend. I got one-shotted a handful of times, which I can never tell if it's just netcode lag making it seem like I was one-shotted, or I actually was one-shotted.

Seriously, they're easy to beat as long as you see them coming. 4x and 6x ER PPC assaults just wail on you from afar.

Yes, they're easy to beat when they're easy to beat. The other half of the time, they will rape your face on one 90-pt volley.

No, I mean they're easy to beat when you see them and can snipe the ever-living crap out of them. If they get in close, you have to change tactics. What are you running that gets so much trouble from splat cats?

Crash Coredump wrote:

Actually I recall dropping against Broceratops several times also, during our 4-mans. Tourney FTL.

Splatcats were out in full force throughout the weekend. I got one-shotted a handful of times, which I can never tell if it's just netcode lag making it seem like I was one-shotted, or I actually was one-shotted.

Seriously, they're easy to beat as long as you see them coming. 4x and 6x ER PPC assaults just wail on you from afar.

Yes, they're easy to beat when they're easy to beat. The other half of the time, they will rape your face on one 90-pt volley.

No, I mean they're easy to beat when you see them and can snipe the ever-living crap out of them. If they get in close, you have to change tactics. What are you running that gets so much trouble from splat cats?

Crash Coredump wrote:

Actually I recall dropping against Broceratops several times also, during our 4-mans. Tourney FTL.

I don't understand. I thought only solo drops would count towards tournament rankings.

They do, however he probably dropped solo and ended up against us. What it sort of indicates though is that the tourney people were dropping against 4-mans. So, it wasn't REALLY a 8 solo vs 8 solo tourney.

most of the time, people who get nailed by splat-cats lost their situational awareness and let one get into range without putting some fire on them down range.

Whenever I'm playing my splat-cat, I sneak around to get in close.

Yep. They demand a 300XL engine minimum, or 315XL if you're willing to shed some ammo, armor, and/or AMS. But breaking from the formation's usually a death sentence because you are quite the priority target. My best results were typically not lone-wolf flanking actions but 2nd-line attack actions. I let an Assault or another Heavy take the attention and I move on whatever I think has the most tunnel vision.

Arsinius M wrote:

Splatcats are a problem close-quarters, which simply happens unavoidably sometimes.

Saying splatcats aren't a problem at range is irrelevant and rather 'captain obvious', CPX.

That's why I'm asking what you're running when you run into them. I can tell you what builds have a chance at what ranges. I don't know your in-game handle, so I don't know what you've been running, typically.

For example, dual AC/20 K2s will make Splat Cats run away in a heart beat. Dual Gauss, not as much, but still a consideration.

I ran into trouble at times when I was in a Cataphract because it's harder to keep enough distance if they've already snuck within ~350m and have cover and have me as their chosen target/victim. Not as big a problem in Centurions, and definitely not in Ravens. Easier when there are teammates around to intervene or distract. Harder when there are other enemies you're already engaging. There are a lot of variables, really. Just this weekend they were particularly dangerous because people in the running for the contest were using them and some of them know precisely how to use them to greatest advantage.

I picked a terrible weekend to start grinding Ravens. So not only do I get outright destroyed by anything that targets me, a lot of PUG/solo matches that I dropped in ended up being base-cap runs... meaning minimal XP gains. I actually rage-quit the game this weenend and went outside.

And yes I agree, that your downfall to a splatcat is due to lost/lack of situational awareness. And trying to sneak up behind one doesnt work either, as they have an exceptionally ridiculous amount of torso twist.

I ran into trouble at times when I was in a Cataphract because it's harder to keep enough distance if they've already snuck within ~350m and have cover and have me as their chosen target/victim. Not as big a problem in Centurions, and definitely not in Ravens. Easier when there are teammates around to intervene or distract. Harder when there are other enemies you're already engaging. There are a lot of variables, really. Just this weekend they were particularly dangerous because people in the running for the contest were using them and some of them know precisely how to use them to greatest advantage.

Yeah. CTF's were usually one of my favorite targets because of their design (big torso hit-box to dish-out maximum damage) and I knew they could rarely outrun me. I've gotten some nasty surprises if they manage to face me with an AC/20, triple LBX, or the most insidious, the 4xAC/2 build. Outside of those builds, CTFs are just not that great at close-combat.

This part sounds obvious, but its worth stating as a reminder: A splat cat typically gets to alpha every 6-8 seconds, so if you at least get to see it coming in range, look away 90 degrees to at least present a narrower torso profile until he fires. Then just wail on his wings with everything you have. 40 points of armor is tough to get through, but if you know the rythm, you can preserve the cockpit and CT while minimizing arm and ST damage. If they're running doors open, your window's smaller but they're asking to have their pods ripped off.

Speaking of Tzeentch, he's in my merc group (Shieldwall of Rasalhague/Skjaldborg). That guy put in some ridiculous numbers over the weekend, I was in the same TS server but he spent most of the time in his own channel just grinding. By the way, he had no help from people trying to sync drop with him at all, there were a few complaints about that in general on the forums.

Anyway, aside from his cat he spent about 50% of the time in a trip Ac2 Dragon. He actually posted a screenshot of one game where he broke his personal best of 1000 damage PURELY from AC2s in one game.

We had another guy in the top 20 in mediums, and let me say that both of them definitely put in the time to win that. Not that I'm happy with how that was required, but anyone in the top 25 put in way more time that people should have time for to get up there.

Happy for Tzeentch, good guy, good Dragon pilot, and let no one say that Dragon's can't be effective.

Didn't play much this Saturday. Barely 2 hours, if that. Did some solo drops in my Phract though, and was placed at about 200 overall for a bit there, which I found highly amusing. By Sunday night of course I had plummeted, but no big deal.

Still enjoying the 2xERPPC, 1xUAC5, 2xMG Ilya build. It really feels nice and rounded to me. Before I was doing some ERPPC+Gauss, or 3xAC5, etc builds, but they felt too much like 1-trick ponies, and really didn't match my play style. This one though just fits me, giving me a nice long range punch, mid range suppression, and short range crit-seeker while the ERs cool. I feel like a predator stalking the battlefield, look for prey to mercilessly harass.

Also did some drops in my Wang. Tossed back in the AC-20 w/3 tons, and an ER-Large laser. I think a 300XL for the engine. Had a pretty decent time in it just going for cash drops. Even on Alpine it was pretty damn fun since at 100Kph I was able to pop in and out of cover pretty easily and harass with the ER. Then once they closed, Ol' Painful was waiting.

I have to say Alpine is currently my favorite map. Even in my shorter range builds I don't feel that gimpy. You just have to play smart and engage on YOUR terms. Sure, some of my builds have been tweaked a bit - like the ER large on my Wang, and ER-Large upgrade on my DDC from Standards, but otherwise my short range punches are still there.